In Search Of Excellence - Anthony Scaramucci: Overcome Your Fear | E06

Episode Date: August 31, 2021

Randall Kaplan is joined by Anthony Scaramucci to discuss rising through the ranks of global finance as a blue-collar kid from Long Island, balancing the pursuit of our dreams with our personal obligations, what he learned from his 11-day stint as the White House Communications Director for President Trump in July 2017, and much more. Topics Include:Growing up in a blue-collar family. Anthony’s early jobs and entrepreneurial aspirations. Failing the Bar Exam.  Lessons learned from being hired and fired at Goldman Sachs.  Anthony’s involvement in NY politics.  The importance of growing your network.  Public speaking and performances.  Getting clear on what it means to pursue excellence in your life.  Philanthropy, and other topics. Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and co-managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, an investment firm that manages over $10 billion.  He is the founder of the prestigious SALT Conference, a global thought leadership and networking forum encompassing finance, technology, and geopolitics.  In 2016, he was ranked number 85 in Worth Magazine's Power 100, a list of the most powerful people in global finance.  Anthony is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Vice-Chair of the Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board, a board member of the Business Executives for National Security (BENS), and a Trustee of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Foundation.Sponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

I can tell you that the people in my life, I can sense right away, Randy, when they have overcome the fear of being who they were meant to be. That's excellence. It's not a comparative thing. So focus inward and overcome the fear and that anxiety of falling down. Lock on the target. Let's generate some success. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, our quest for greatness and our desire to be the very best we can be, to learn, educate, and motivate

ourselves to live up to our highest potential. It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication, and perseverance. It's about believing in ourselves and the ability to overcome the many obstacles we all face in our lives. Achieving excellence is our goal, and it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities, and surroundings, and we all have different routes on how we hope and want to get there. Today, my guest is my great friend, Anthony Scaramucci. Anthony is the founder and co-managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, which manages over $10 billion. He is the founder of their prestigious SALT Conference, the largest hedge fund conference in the world, which brings together leaders from the worlds of finance,

heads of states, presidents, prime ministers, entrepreneurs, and athletes, among many others. He is the author of four books, including The Little Book of Hedge Funds, Goodbye, Gordon Gekko, Hopping Over the Rabbit Hole, and Trump, the Blue Collar President. In 2016, he was ranked number 85 in Worth Magazine's Power 100, the most powerful people in global finance. In 2017, he served as a White House communications director for the long period of 11 days. Among other prestigious boards, Anthony is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is vice chair of the Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board, and is the trustee of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Foundation. Anthony, welcome to In Search of Excellence. I always start out my podcast with family,

and I do that because for nearly all of us, we're a product of our surroundings and upbringing. And that starts with our parents. I think it's every parent's goal to be great role models for their kids. And part of that is trying to teach us from a young age to excel and be the best you can be. What were your parents like and did they instill these kinds of values in you? Well, first of all, it's an honor to be here. I don't want to sugarcoat things. I want to talk as honestly as I can about the situation. I had a rough upbringing. My brother has been in and out of rehab three or four times. I think he's on his fourth rehab. My parents were not educated. It was a tough household to grow up in because there was constant economic stress and constant tension, but they loved us.

And I think at the end of the day, as you get older, and this is a learning message to all the young people that listen to you, Randy, your parents are probably just trying to do their best. They are coming into life with their own environmental issues, their own natural issues. And so my parents, they came from two immigrant families. My grandparents got here from Italy, impoverished. One side, the Scaramucci's went to work in the coal mining town of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The DeFeo's, my mother's side. My grandfather, Augustine, was an auto mechanic, and then he was a mason, and then he had a small store, but they struggled. And so this was a family, I would say a blue-collar family.

The only thing I would say that is different today is that my dad had a living wage. So he was a crane operator. He worked 42 years for the same company, but that was enough money to live in a small house. Maybe it was 1300 square feet. Five people lived in that house. We had one full bath. We did not grow up poor. I would never tell anybody that. My father was a super hard worker. I would never be disrespectful to my dad's work ethic by suggesting to anybody that I grew up poor. I did not grow up poor, but we had a rough house. It was not an easy place. And I think what happens to you as you're growing up, you start to idealize your future. And I can remember back in the mid seventies when my father lost his overtime. That was a very, very big deal in my family because you get paid time and a half. If you work Sunday, you got double time. And so those weekend days or time'clock in the morning. He was on the job site at five, six o'clock. He worked to 2.30. He had overtime. He would come home at five. If he didn't have overtime, he'd come home at 2.30. And then he had the opportunity to work on the weekend. So when they cut his hours back, that created stress and anxiety in the family.

So I was probably 11 or 12 years old. I said, okay, I got to go get a job. I went and got a paper route. And I started hustling papers in my town. I put the baskets on my bicycle at 10 speed. I had one of those paper carrier pouches. And then I convinced the local manager of Long Island's Newsday to give me free papers on Wednesday. I used to go into the apartment buildings near my house. I used to hand out papers. And then I would ring the doorbells. These women, Randy, they were all Jews, Italians, and Irish. Okay. And every single one of them knew my mother. I mean, my mother was like Siri or Alexa before there was a Siri. If you wanted to know who was screwing who or who was having an affair in the town or what the hell was going on, my mother knew the answer. All you had

to do is pick up the phone and call her. And so all these old ladies, I mean, they were probably young ladies at that time, 35, 40 years ago, but they were friends of my mom. And I said, hey, how are you, Mrs. Sheridan? Oh, great. I just dropped off the paper. Did you enjoy Newsday? Oh, you did? Great. Do you want to subscribe? And I guilted every one of those Jewish, Italian, and Irish ladies into subscribing to the paper. So I had the largest paper out in the town. I was clearing about $45 a week. I put $15 in my pocket for my personal consumption, And I gave $30 to my parents. I've been in a negative subsidy to my parents since that day. I mean, there was just never, it was always on up. And this is why I have such empathy for blue collar people, because you're always on this

treadmill, you're always working and you always got this anxiety and there's a little savings, but that's what was motivating to me. And I became an entrepreneur born from those experiences. But my parents loved me. They are good people. My dad's 86. My mom's 84, but they were uneducated. It was a rough neighborhood. It was a rough house. And so I don't want to sugarcoat it because I think if you sugarcoat stuff and you start to build this hagiography, it's very, very bad for your kids. I don't want my kids to see me without my flaws or to revise history. I'm not interested in revising history. I'd rather tell it the way it was so that people can look at it and say, okay, wow,

that's really raw. That's powerful. And it's authentic. You know, there were a lot of fistfights. There were a lot of fistfights in the neighborhood. There were, well, you didn't back down in my neighborhood. I can tell you that. I mean, we're going to get into the Trump stuff later, but you weren't allowed to come

back into the, if you back down in a fight, it was like, you know, you couldn't do that. You can't back down in a fight. But that was my upbringing. And I will say this about my dad, which I always respected about him. He was very honest. I mean, he still is. And I'll tell this story. We were in Main Street. He got a parking ticket on the Main Street in the town. He took the ticket. He walked up to the post office and got a money order to pay the ticket. Pops, why are you doing that? I don't want it over my head. I don't want the ticket over my head. The meter expired.

Dad, you could go home and write a check out of the checkbook and then mail it tomorrow. No, no, no. I got to get it done right now. That was my father. And he was a big guy in the live below your means sort of thing. He was one of his lines that are always in my head. I tell my kids this, although, you know, I mean, you know, look, I mean, I don't know. My kids, I basically, you know, I spoil the living shit out of them. Okay. I'm sorry I said shit, but that's exactly what it is. Spoil the living shit out of them.

And so they're not thinking like that. That's fine. We've shifted the generation and we've made some money. But my father was always like, if you can't afford the price of the movies or you can't afford the price of the ticket, don't go to the movies. That was my pops. And so I have no debt. I pay all my taxes on time. I have no anxiety related to that part of money. The anxiety I have related to money is, holy shit, better make some more money because life is uncertain. We're going to have huge inflation here momentarily.

You better be in the game. You better be making money. So your dad set a really good example on the work ethic front. When you had a paper route, sounds like you worked very hard at that and very entrepreneurial of you to very hard at that and very entrepreneurial of you to get the free papers and then sell them. What did you do for fun?

Kids like to have fun. Did you play sports? Yeah, that was the heartbreak for Mr. Fusco, may his soul rest in peace. I was a pretty good baseball player as a kid. And so I took on a lark. I tried out for the junior varsity baseball team in my town. You could be in the eighth grade and you were eligible for junior varsity baseball. I had that paper route, the fifth, sixth, and seventh grade. The summer of the eighth grade, that would be like March of 1978, I tried out for the team and I made the team. Now, young girls, Randy, were way more important than papers. So I quit the paper route so I could play baseball. And so I've always been a baseball enthusiast, a baseball buff. I owned a piece of the New York Mets for a period of time.

I sold it to Steve Cohen last year, a lifelong Mets fan. So I've always been a sports enthusiast. I try to get to the gym regularly, but I was a pretty decent athlete as a kid. My friends break my onions now because I'm obviously a little short guy, but as a kid, I have to bring my yearbook. It's how embarrassing I am as a person, Randy. I have to bring my high school yearbook in once in a while and show my gravitas in high school athletics. But, you know, so I was always into athletics. I'm a big reader. I read constantly.

I like the outdoors. I have a place where, you know, we go skiing in the winter. You know, I love water sports. I lived on Long Island, so it was impossible not to be involved with water. You know, so in the summer, I was a water skiing enthusiast, fish, you know, clam. I don't know. You grew up in Chicago. Where'd you grow up, Randy?

Detroit. Detroit. Okay. So you grew up in the Midwest, so you probably were around the lakes. So, I mean, you know, I enjoyed you grew up in the Midwest, so you probably were around the lakes. So I mean, I enjoyed all of that in the summer. I was always an entrepreneur though. So I got the baseball thing figured out.

So then I went to the local shopping store, like the key food. I don't know what they called it in your area. Maybe it was an Acme or a stop and Shop or something like that out where you are now. It's Ralph's. I went to the supermarket. I cut a deal with the manager where I told him, look, I can't tell you when I'm going to start, but I'll punch the clock, I promise, with the timestamp because I was playing baseball. And so if we had a road game, I may get there at seven o'clock. If I didn't have a road game, I may get there at seven o'clock. If I didn't have a road game, I may get there at six o'clock. I cut a deal with the manager where after school sports, I would go stock shelves in the local supermarket, mop the floors. Sometimes they gave me freezer duty. I hated that because you were freezing your ass off while you're trying to put everything together. But to this day, you will see me take the shopping cart

and roll it back up to the front of the store and put it into the other shopping carts to this day because of that job. He's another guy that passed away. This guy was an amazing guy. He was an amazing entrepreneur, Italian-American. I remember he loved me. I mean, knock on wood, I'm in the place. I can tell you the exact day. It was a weekend or school was out. It was June 30th, 1980. I can tell you the exact day. I can tell you the weather. It was blazing hot, summer day. This idiot backed up the Coca-Cola truck into the loading bay. And we had glass bottles back in the day. All the glass bottles came out of the truck, landed in the loading area, exploded everywhere. My boss is on the up, these are Scaramucci,

come to the back. Instead of clean up on aisle seven, you got to go out and mop up and sweep up the loading. And there's broken glass everywhere. The guy was drunk, actually. I mean, you could smell the alcohol on the driver. I had my little apron on and my little pants. And I went out there and I got stung by every yellow jacket on Long Island. Okay. They were crawling up my pants.

They were attacking me in the back. And I came in, I was swollen with bee stings. I was like, oh my God, I got to go to college. There is no way I'm doing this for a living. Just looked at him. I said, I don't know where I'm going to college, but I'm going to college. I'm not doing this for a living. That was a big moment for me. I know that sounds crazy, but it was like, my family was a family of workers, you know, they're working class people. So, you know, my parents wanted me to go to college, but they didn't know the difference between these colleges. You know, when I got into Tufts, my father thought it was spelled T-O-U-G-H-S. He had no clue, no clue. Okay. And then, you know, it probably sounds nuts, but when I got

into Harvard, my parents had the map out. They had like one of those old Rand McNally maps. And my mother had like the yellow highlighter taking us to Hartford. Ma, why do you have us going to Hartford? You're not going to Hartford Law School? I said, no, ma, I'm not going to Hartford Law School. Well, why would they call it Hartford Law School if it's not in Hartford? Because it's not called Hartford Law School. It's Harvard Law School, mom. And that was my life. Okay, so my parents had no clue.

They just wanted me to get educated, and that's how it happened. Here's the thing. It's what I love about you. Okay. I'm telling you the raw, raw, naked, unvarnished. This is how it went down. Okay. I had the gold chains. I had the 1979 Berlinetta Camaro that I bought from the Sunoco station, which my parents didn't want me to buy, but I had saved up the money quietly to buy it. And I got an Alpine power booster in there. I don't know if you guys did that in Detroit, but I'm probably half deaf because of that. And I had all my little cassette tapes.

And I used to drive the girls down to Jones Beach. I used to put seven or eight people in that car. And of course, because my uncle had a motorcycle shop in the town and I didn't mention that, but I worked there too. So I worked there on the weekends. So I learned how to drive when I was 14. I got in my first car accident when I was 15. And I can remember having too many people in the car to cost would stop me. Sometimes they would let me go. Other times I had people outside the car hitchhiking down to Jones Beach. I mean, that was it, man. We have a lot of similarities in our background. We're going to get into this a little bit later,

but I bagged groceries in high school to make some money to pay for long-distance phone bills to my girlfriend who was a year ahead of me at Michigan. And I also had a Chevy Camaro, the four-cylinder with hubcaps that weren't hubcaps. They looked like actually metal plates, but we're going to get into some of the similarities. But you strike me as that kind of a guy. I'm not surprised by any of that, but the guy's name was Lou Campanelli. I mean, he was such a guy. And I'm going to say this to you, you remember this stuff because I want to be a boss like Lou Campanelli. So when I'm in a situation in my office, even though he was the local key food owner, I'm

like, what would Lou do in this situation? He was such a humane, good guy, Randy. At some point in your life, you made a conscious effort to be the best at whatever you did. And it sounds like you were doing that way back with the paper route. We're going to move into the education and there's no better investment in our future than a good education. But when did you really make a conscious effort

to be great at something? Was it in school? So you get into Tufts? So was it a Tufts so you can get into Harvard? No, no, no, no. I was a disaster in school, in high school. I got into Tufts because, they'll be pissed at me for saying this, but I'll tell you. My father was weighing trucks when he got older.

So he started as a laborer and he was a crane operator. And then when he got into his fifties, they let him weigh trucks. So you put the crushed aggregate on the truck and and then you weigh the truck, and then you get charged by per square ton of the aggregate. And there was a guy by the name of Billy Tommaso, and may his soul rest in peace. And I think he was either on the board of trustees at Tufts. He was a huge donor. He was an alumnus of Tufts University.

And he said to my pops, how many kids do you have? Three kids, two boys and a girl. Okay, great. Are they going to go to college? Oh, yeah. And? Three kids, two boys and a girl. Okay, great. Are they going to go to college? Oh, yeah. And I would want my kids to go to college. Okay, great. Where are they going to go to college?

Well, there was a college down the block from us called CW Post College. It's like Long Island University. And my father said, well, they're going to go to CW Post. It's right down the block. And the guy says, no, no, no. You can't go to CW Post. I want to send your kids to Tufts. So my father comes home, my older brother, he looks at us, he says, forget about CW Post. You're going to Tufts.

It's spelled T-O-U-G-H-S. Go look it up in that stupid phone book at the colleges. So my brother gets the book out. He's opening up the book. It's like, Dad, it's not spelled T-O-U. It's T-U-F-T-S. And it's most selective. We're not going to Tufts, Dad. We don't have the grades for it. No, no, no. This guy, Billy Tommaso, he's going to help you out. You're going to go to Tufts. So my brother went to Tufts. He's a couple of years older than me. And then my father was like Henry Ford in this respect. He was like, you can go to any school you want as long as it's Tufts. So I ended up getting into Tufts. So I went to Tufts. So this is the moment.

I was a disaster in high school. Okay. I had a very high SAT score, but I had like, you know, Stugatz grades, you know, they were like mediocre grades. And I was chasing the girls and I was driving to Camaro. That's what I was interested in. And I was working. So the moment in my life that changed me was April of 1982. My pops handed me a $10,000 check. It was made out to me. Dad, what is this? I said, well, I cashed in

the cash value of my union life insurance. So he was putting money away every month into his life insurance policy, and it was building some cash value. And so he terminated it and he got the check and he handed it to me. And he said, I don't really have any money to send you to the school. Your brother, I gave him a little bit of money. He was on his own. I'm giving you a little bit of money. I didn't really have any money. So I cashed out of my life insurance. I said, pops, you cashed out of your life insurance? I said, pops, you cashed out of your life insurance. I said, well, you know, I mean, you put, you know, that's fine. It's fine.

You need the money, but that's really all I have. And it was April of 1982. And Randy, I don't know what that, I don't know what it was because I was a young jerk off of a kid. Like an anvil hit me in the head, like the wildy coyote. And I was like, okay, I cannot disappoint my parents. He just gave me his life insurance, canceled. And I got this $10,000 check. I paid the first, the tuition was $24,000 plus the room and board. So I had money saved. I paid it.

I don't know if you want to hear about spring break, but I could bring that up too if you're interested. And then I went to Tufts and then I was hustling up there. I was delivering pizzas. I was delivering newspapers. I had t-shirts made. I was probably in violation of the NASCAF logos, but I made these t-shirts. I was handing out the t-shirts. That's exactly what I did, by the way. Did the t-shirts. Yeah, I had to do t-shirts. We were printing them and then I was selling them and I had Fruit of the Loom and I had Hanes and I was calling people to see if I can get a better deal. Do you know what I'm saying? And then to make a long story short, I always had money though,

because of that. I was always hustling to make sure that I was just ahead. And of course, I was borrowing. I had to borrow because there was no way I could afford it all. But here's the one thing I will say about Harvard. They gave you the money, man. You got into Harvard. They were like, okay. And by the way, you remember this, the interest rates were like 9%, 10% back in the day. They were like, okay, we're going to give you the money. How much do you need? I'm like, well, how much can I get? They're like, well, tell us what you need. And I filled out all the paperwork and they gave me, I don't know, 60 or $70,000 for the three years at like a 3% interest rate. And so I love, I mean, so I always an endowed scholarship at Tufts for kids that have no money, where if they get in and the criteria of income is set up a certain way, they get some money from me to help them out with their tuition.

We have another similarity there. I endowed a scholarship at Michigan. It's a full ride for someone in state, merit-based, for a student that has an interest in business. So I think it's great that you're giving back. But at some point, Anthony, you must have killed it at Tufts because you got into Harvard. And that's where you and I... Well, that was the epiphany. That was the epiphany. So I don't know why you weren't that good in school. You strike me as somebody that was very good in school. No, no. I was Phi Beta Kappa my junior year. I graduated top 1%

of my class, but I did not get accepted to Harvard Law School. I went to Northwestern Law School. I don't test well. My friends all went to Harvard and I went to Northwestern, which I love, by the way. It's a fantastic school and I'm very involved in the school today. Yeah, I mean, at that level, these schools are fantastic. You know, I always tested well for whatever reason. You know, everyone's got different skills. I always tested well, you know, and I did well on the LSAT, had high grades at Tufts like you. I was like summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.

I applied to seven schools. I got rejected from Yale and I got into the other six schools and went to Harvard. I remember the day. It was February 6th, 1986. It was Ronald Reagan's 75th birthday. I drove my Camaro down to Harvard from Tufts. It's only like three miles away. I went there with a $250 check from Bay Banks to lock in my position. And then, you probably don't want to hear this, but what was my next move? I turned to the lady behind. I said, how are you? Great. I said, the law firms recruit here, right? Yes, they do. Do you have a recruiting book? And she said, yes, I do. I said, oh, could I see it? She handed me this phone book of

all these major law firms. And so then I took the Harvard alumni directory and I cross-referenced. And by the way, this is how naive I was. I wanted to be a Wall Street lawyer, Randy. So I said that Wall Street lawyers, they must be on Wall Street. So I opened up the book, looked at the addresses. There was a law firm called Hughes, Hubbard, and Reed. They were located at one Wall Street. And so I looked up the partners of Hughes, Hubbard, and Reed that were in the Harvard Law alumni directory. I wrote them all down. I typed up my resume on a Panasonic typewriter, and I went to New York, and I cold called these people. This is before 9-11, right? So you literally, I went to the one Wall Street, rode the elevator

to the 28th floor, the elevator opened up., I went to the one wall street, rode the elevator to the 28th floor. The elevator opened up. There I am standing there in my like polyester suit. How are you? I'm here to see like Worthington Babscom, the 32nd or some shit like that. And she's like, well, is he expecting you? I said, I don't know. I mean, well, I think he is. I said, you know, the, uh, the, you know, of course I told the fib, I said, the Harvard placement people told me to come see him. And so the guy comes out with the fucking suspenders on and he says, come on in here. I said, yeah, I said, well, listen, sir. I said, I just, I'm at Tufts. I'm about to graduate. I got accepted to Harvard. I have no money and, but I'm willing to work hard. Here's my transcript

and I'll come in every day. I'll work throughout the night. I don't care, but I need some experience. I also need some money. I got to pay for this thing. So he looks at me and he says, I'll start you at $8 an hour. So Randy, you know what I said to him? Could you make it 10? He goes, wow, you have some brass balls as a kid. You have some brass balls. I said, well, I need the money. Do you know what? I'm going to make it 10. So that summer, they killed me. I worked on the People's Express merger with Continental Airlines, summer of 1986. And they were paying me $10 an hour.

And I got overtime there. And they gave me some money. And I was able to, that really helped me to get through school. Let's talk about after Harvard. You took the bar exam. Tell us about that. That was my immaturity, my naivete, my imbecile period. Harvard is very good for you in some ways and very bad for you in others. It's very good for you because you get a great education, meet some really smart people, you build a nice network. It's bad for you because you can start believing your own BS and your own garbage. They told me that you needed a 66% to pass the New York State bar. And I just got done telling you that I'm a good test taker. So was working and I was out water skiing. And I used to get my girlfriend and get the skis. And my father had this little 20-foot fishing boat. It's a Boston

Whaler. We had an Evinrude engine on the back of it. I used to go water skiing, crack open a beer, eat deli sandwiches. Well, aren't you taking the bar in July? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fine. I don't worry about it. I'm fine. Skiing, working at night, working for my uncle's motorcycle shop. About six days before the bar exam, I cracked open the books to look at the test. And I got a little panicked. I was like, okay, this is a lot more than I thought. And then it dawned on me, the test was designed to ensure that you put the six weeks of time in. Okay. And I didn't have it. Arrogant, stupidity, overconfidence. I mean, whatever you want to call it.

And so the piece de resistance is I failed the test by one multiple choice question. Okay. So I got a 65.6 on the test. And New York State does not round up. You have to get to the 66 number. So I failed by one multiple choice question. It was horrifyingly embarrassing. Didn't help me in terms of the first impression that I made at Goldman Sachs.

Did not help me. And then, because I'm, you know, I don't know, this is probably more stupidity, but this is, I'm telling you this so that young people could pay attention. I had to take the Series 7 to go to Goldman Sachs, which is the broker dealer licensed to sell securities. I had all these yuppies in my class, right? Harvard, Michigan, you know, this, that, and the other thing. And so they had this tradition at Goldman where you played series seven chicken. Do you know what that is? I could guess what it is, but you can tell us what it is. I think I... Yeah, no, you get the, whoever gets the, to pass the thing,

you get a 72. Whoever gets closest to 72 and passes wins the pot. There were 40 kids in the class, $200 a piece. It was an $8,000 pot. Okay. Well, who do you think won the pot? Who do you think won the pot? I mean, okay. I was erasing answers with my number two question. Okay. I had it worked out that I was going to get a 74. I gave myself a two point of error, and I got myself down to a 74, and I won. But now here's how stupid I am. The lowest score of that Goldman class was 91. All I needed was an 89, right? So in other words, everyone else did not play Series 7 chicken. I was the only one playing it. They were just doing it for the peer pressure. They threw the $200 into the pot.

So now I look like I'm the dumbest person that Goldman has ever hired. I failed the bar exam and I got a 73, but I did get the $8,000. I got the $8,000 and I got a 73 on series seven on the test. And then I got fired from Goldman about 18 months after I got hired. So that was another, I mean, that was like a huge disaster. I mean, I tell people, you think me getting fired from the White House was bad. How about getting fired from Goldman after 18 months? I had no money loaded up with school debt. I mean, that was even worse, man. That was a lot worse. Let's back up for a bit. I mean, Goldman Sachs is the investment banking group, as you know, is the most prestigious,

most difficult job to get coming out of grad school. You're coming out of law school. The other people have worked, probably gone to have a BBA. They probably know how to model. You're getting there and they expect you to model, create these super complicated 200-page models with a lot of inputs and variables. And here you go, go put these two companies together and tell us if it makes sense. Tell us where the profits are, where you can cut costs. And it's intimidating, right? I sent a letter to Goldman

Sachs right out of law school. Didn't even hear back from them. There was no shot. And to put some numbers on this, Goldman Sachs gets 250,000 applications a year from college graduates. And the acceptance rate in the investment bank group is less than 3%. So let's talk about, because we really want to focus on how people are going to achieve their best. I mean, the odds coming out of law school, you're working at Goldman Sachs. How did that come about? And did the odds scare you that you weren't even going to get there? Yeah. But I mean, again, some of your pigheadedness and your naivete is that you go

on missile lock on something. And so I wanted a job in investment banking. I read everything that I could about Goldman. And then I realized that my ticket in was to identify somebody at Harvard that was teaching a course that was from Goldman. And so I found that person in 1987, a gentleman by the name of David Dorst, who was running their international sales and trading area. I love David. One of the nicest guys on Wall Street. He's incredible. Yeah. So he's a real human being, terrific guy. He's been to almost every SALT conference that I've done. He was with me in Abu Dhabi, the last one, unfortunately, before we had to postpone these events due to the pandemic. But David, he was an unbelievable guy. And I took his course in international markets. I did very well. He invited me down to be

interviewed. They interviewed me in 87 for a summer job. and they told me, no go on the summer job. You don't have enough experience. And then I said, okay, well, what would I need to do to get more experience? And then they told me, and then I went and checked those boxes, and then I went back. And then they said, okay, but then you need to do A, B, and C. And then I said, okay, then I did A, B, and C. In December of 1988, they gave me that job offer, that very coveted job offer. But here's another learning lesson for the young

people that listen to you, Randy. At a high level of insecurity at the time, I was out of my element because I'd grown up in a blue collar family. David can confirm this if you ever run into him. He was like, okay, listen, man, you're a smart kid, but you're like literally the worst dressed person that we've ever met at the Harvard Law School. I mean, you can't wear polyester. I mean, I had 100% polyester suit. I had 100% polyester shirt, a black Guido tie, cockroach killing, you know, Capizio dance shoes. My hair was blown back like Tony Manero from Saturday Night Live, Saturday Night Fever. And Doris was like, you're very, very smart,

but I can't bring you down to Goldman Sachs. You're like fully flammable at any moment you're going to explode. You got to go to Brooks Brothers or there's a place called J Press. You got to go over there and buy yourself some clothes. I remember being so embarrassed. And I had no money, right? So I went and got a credit card. I got the clothes and the clothes actually fit pretty nicely. You always look better in natural fibers, by the way, just so your listeners know that. And I went down to Goldman, I got the interview, but it was a work in progress. It took about two years. I started the Odyssey to get the job at Goldman in 1987. And to quote Darst, I must have met 60 people at Goldman before they offered me the job. One of the guys said,

this guy wants this job so badly, we're giving him the job. And I got the job, but I sucked at the job. So this is the learning lesson for everybody. I was going for the cool job. You just mentioned it was a prestigious place back in the day and it was Goldman Sachs. I was going for the cool job, but I wasn't going for the job that was right for me. I was going for the job that was going to impress my friends coming out of Harvard Law School. That's a mistake. You got to go for the job that you're going to be good at and the job that you're going to love so you don't feel like you're working. So when I got there, I had no clue and I didn't know what the hell was going on. And I had to get up to speed quickly. And I had already formed a very bad impression by failing

the bar exam and getting a 73 on the series seven. And so when the recession came, they fired me. Now, the best part of this story, the woman calls me, I'm fired February 1st, 1991. And my boss says, we're going to give you $11,000 severance check. I said, okay, thank you. Another learning lesson for kids. Don't be mad at the people that fire you. Do not do that. Always be nice to those people. They're having a hard day too. They may come up with a way to help you later on. General Kelly and I are like best friends now. You saw General Kelly at my conference last year, and we've done seven speaking engagements. He fired my ass from the White House. So, I mean, just relax. You got to be nice to everybody. So I'm being very nice to the guy that fires me. I got the money, the $11,000, and now looking for a job. So I got a roll of quarters, Randy. There's no cell phones. And I'm pumping quarters at the Grand Central train station. I'm calling people, got my resume, I got my suit on, natural fiber suit, and I'm going to get a job. My buddy calls me that night, leaves an answering machine message. I think I have the perfect job

for you. Call me back. I call him up. He says, there's a job in the sales and trading area. And this is where David Doris used to work. There's an opening there. And I think you're very good at that stuff. You've been selling your whole life. I'm going to try to help you get the job. I said, okay, great. And then I called the guy that fired me, the partner that fired me. I said, hey, I know you fired me, but I got a good attitude. I came to work. Yes, you're a great guy. You just don't have the room for you. I said, what about the job upstairs? And this guy, Mike Facitelli, who I'm still very close to, walked upstairs for me. He told the hiring partner in that division that I had the right attitude and the right makeup, and they

should give me a shot up there. He's already been trained here at Goldman. So I got rehired. So I got fired on February 1st. I got rehired on March 28th. Now the personnel people call me. They're like, hey, how are you? I said, great. They said, yeah, I have really good news for you. You're never going to have to tell anybody you got fired. We're just going to mark it down as an interdepartmental transfer. I said, okay, that's great. Can we get the $11,000 back, please? I said, no, I've already spent the money. I said, you can't get the $11,000 back. I already used it to pay off debt. You can't get it. What am I going to say to the partner? I said, well, hold on a second. That partner fired me. He put the expenses on his budget to give me $11,000. Just tell him I spent it. I don't have the money. I'm probably

the only person in Goldman's history that's been hired and fired and then rehired and kept the severance check. The world's a very round world. I came to Los Angeles as well. Another similarity, I had gone to law school. I moved out to Los Angeles. I had $3,000 in the bank. There were layoffs. I got laid off before I even found out that I passed the bar. And I was looking at waiting tables. And when I got laid off, I get called into the conference room, been there five and a half weeks. I said, see you later. A lot of people really make a mistake. They get fired and they insult, they swear, stomp out. People say, fuck you. But it's a really round world. And then a few years later, I was looking for my third job.

I took another job one hour away from Los Angeles. I was working until midnight every night, wanted to work downtown Los Angeles for this firm. I was working in Costa Mesa. They said, you got to move. So I'm now looking for my third job out first year. And the firm I wanted was a Melvin E. and Myers, one of the best firms in Los Angeles. They didn't hire me. And I was crushed. And interestingly, the guy who took me on my callback at the fanciest restaurant in Los Angeles at the time, Patina, treated me like an asshole.

Arrogant asshole. Had no interest in me whatsoever. So I get hired a year later at Sun America. I'm the assistant to the chairman. Malvany is our main counsel. And I'm in this room one day at lunch at their firm with a free lunch and my boss is there. And up comes this guy, hey man, what are you doing here? Looking at me, confused. And I said, oh, I work at Sun American. What do you do? I'm the assistant to the chairman. And his eyes just went wide and I walked away. And now I'm in a position in some way to influence the legal work of the firm that didn't want me. But I think the lesson there both times is be nice to people on your way out because it's a very round world. You've had some

ups and downs. I've had a lot of them myself, but they rehired you. And now you're in the wealth management group at some point. What was the transition to that group? Perfect for me because remember I told you about the apartment building and the free papers. So what do they do? They train me for a little while, additional training. And they said, okay, you're going to get a desk, a telephone, and a business card. Here's our list of products and services for wealthy individuals. And you're going to call people from here and you're going to say, hey, how are you? I would like you to invest in this stuff. And perfect for me, because that's

what I was doing since I was 11 years old. And so I actually liked it, right? So I got on the phone, cold calling, whatever you want to call it. But I was having a little hard time in the beginning because I didn't have a network. The first check I wrote was to Rudy Giuliani for politics. And the reason I wrote that check was like $250. He was running for office, running again for mayor. And I needed to use the world of politics in my mind to create a network for myself. Because it was an easy entree, Randy. I had never been inside a country club. I had never hit a golf ball. I never swung a tennis racket. So how was I going to meet people? I said, okay, I can meet people through the fire in politics, obviously with hindsight, but the politics was always a fun project for me, but it was always related to my business. It wasn't to be a politician and it wasn't to go into politics.

I'm 57 years old. If I wanted to be a politician, you start that process way younger. You start that in your 40s or 30s or whatever. I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I never wanted to be a politician, but I used the politics as an entree and that worked. Rudy was very helpful to me. You know, look, Rudy's a shogun now, or whatever you want to say it, you know, we would say in Italian, tutti paz, he's got a chicken running around in his head. But back then, I mean, he was really trying to save the city and he was fun to work with

and he was very helpful to me. But there's a funny story in that. He introduced me to George Pataki. I'm raising money for Pataki. Pataki's running for office and I'm working for Pataki. And then all of a sudden, Rudy says, I'm no longer endorsing Pataki. I'm going to endorse Mario Cuomo. That's Rudy.

So George and I, or Governor Pataki and I are like, wait, what's he doing now? No, he's now with Governor Cuomo. And by the way, Pataki won that race. We raised him a ton of money for that race. But the point I'm making is that the politics for me was a entry. The politics for me was a networking thing. And you'll find I did fundraisers for Chuck Schumer. I did fundraisers for Hillary Clinton. If you were a New York politician, I did a fundraiser for you. I had fun doing it. I liked it. And it wasn't until I got involved with Trump that it crossed over into the disaster that it was. But I mean, that's life.

I mean, what are you going to do? I want to talk for a minute about the transition from investment banking, where I've read that you said you should have never gone into that. It wasn't right for you. And now you're a wealth manager. And you say to people, don't get sucked into the hype of certain things. And you think that people should focus on the things that are fun and they're comfortable when you're comfortable in your own

skin. So the question I have for you, and I'm thinking of a couple of things. I'm thinking about a really good friend of mine. He runs a $10 billion hedge fund. I know you know him. He's well respected. The firm has phenomenal performance, making a shit ton of money. He's fucking miserable. He hates his partners, doesn't like going into work every day. And if you don't know him, you wouldn't even know that. And he's not the only one. I mean, you know people like's really, if you're not doing something that you really love, you should go do something else? Is that realistic when you think about it? I don't know the people's circumstances. What I would say is never take carte blanche or blanket advice from anybody. And if you're trying to mentor somebody, you don't start out with, hey, I did

this right, so you should go do that. Or I did this wrong, so you should never do that. That's not a good way to mentor somebody. The way to mentor somebody is get to know them, get to know what they like, get to know their interests. And then you also have to understand what their obligations are. And so case study, there's a lawyer, he's our age, he's making lots of money, but he's got kids in boarding school and he's got his parents he's got to take care of. He's got this, or maybe he has an ex-wife and all of a sudden he's got these golden handcuffs around him. Is it the right thing to just pick up and leave? Maybe not. Or there's a guy that has a business idea, and it's burning in his soul. Obama, by the way, I would recommend this to you, President Obama. His book, I thought was great. And by the way, you could tell he wrote

the book. And he talked about running for president and the decision-making to run for president. And he almost did not run for president. His wife didn't want him to do it. He was concerned about doing it, but he had this burning thing in his head that he was going to be the first black president. So he was like, if I don't do this, I'm never going to be able to live with myself. So that guy, if you're with him at that moment, you say, Barack or President Obama or Senator or whatever you want to call him, I want to be respectful. I'm talking about him before he ascends to the presidency. Go do it because you got one life. Like Bill Gates, you got to really go back. Every once in a while, I watch his commencement address at Stanford. I don't remember the year. Maybe it was 04, possibly 05. I'm going to guess 05. And he writes a beautiful speech. He gives it even better than he wrote it. And he's like, hey, you're going to be dead, man. You're going to be dead. Okay. Mel Brooks, relax. None of us

are getting out of here alive. So what do you want to do with yourself? To me, I've been really benefited by my dad. If you can't afford the ticket, don't go to the movies. So Randy, I don't compete with anybody. If you have a bigger house than me, mazel tov. If you've got 25 cars and I have one car, mazel tov. If you have 26 vacation homes and I don't, mazel tov. I don't compete with anybody. So I'm always living below my means. So if the volatility of being in business is like this, it's not hitting me at home.

Does that make any sense? But I don't know the personalities that you're talking to, but if you got guys that are stretched thin and they're on that habit trail, maybe they can't get off the habit trail. This is more a question about doing things that you love and getting stuck into a career that you really don't love and they would rather be doing something else? I mean, should we all pursue our dreams? I understand the question, but I'm saying some of it is conditioned upon what their obligations are. Let's say I have the worst job ever, but I'm making really good money and I've got all these people that I'm responsible for.

I probably don't leave that job. That's my point. It depends on what your obligations are. I tried to set my life up. My first house was ridiculously small. I remember my buddies at Goldman were like, what the hell are you living in this area for? I said, well, I'm going to be leaving Goldman as soon as my school debt's paid off. I'm going to start my own business. I did that, and then I moved into a nice house. I gave that to my first wife, the nice house. That's fine. Then I had to go build another house. It's fine. My point is that I don't know what these people are doing with their lives philosophically. If you're asking me a broad philosophical question, you should do what you love, wake up, you should do what you love, because if you don't do that, you're going to regret that for sure. This thing's moving, man. You're my contemporary. This thing is moving. We knew each other 20 years ago. Now, the only thing that's separating my hair from your hair is hair dye. This is Latin American dictator brown. Okay, see that? It looks fucking great on TV. You'll look like Sean Hannity on TV with that hair. I mean, you should go to the colorist. You got to get a good colorist. You can't get one that overly

perfects it, otherwise it doesn't look right. And you can't do it like Rudy. You can't do shake it in the bottle and having it dripping off the side of your head. You got to go to a pro, right? But my point is that we knew each other 20 years ago. You rented me or sublet me office space on the West end of LA. And that was 20 years, Randy, watch me. That was 20 years ago. Boom. Here we are. So 20 years went by. 22, by the way, just to be exact, but well. 22. I think you're right. 22. So that has served you well, the 22 years. And it has served me well. Why? Because we're doing what we like. We're living our lives and we're doing what we like. If you're not doing what you like, wake up, get control of your

financial situation and start doing what you like. And Mel Brooks has the best line ever, relax. None of us are getting out of here alive. Relax. What are you going to do? That's my attitude. I'm going to just tick off a few things that you did. And by the way, so you leave Goldman, you start your own firm, Oscar Capital Management. And just to tell the viewers and listeners what happened there, you were based in New York. Your buddy from law school, Brent Messing, he joins your firm. They need some office space. And Akamai had gone public. I took a quarter floor of a building. I had a Bloomberg machine, which was fucking stupid. It was like $15,000 a month.

I barely knew how to use it for stock quotes. And then one day I woke up, what am I doing here? I'm going to sublease my space and move down the street. Brett walks in the next day and he says, okay, it's perfect. I'll take it. I want all the furniture. I'm going to pay costs for everything, but I need to move in on Thursday. It was like two days later. I said, I'm keeping my desk. I'm keeping the chairs and I'll be out in maybe a week. I found a place down the street. So that's how we met. You've been a great friend ever since. So you leave Goldman. You start this firm. The firm sold to Neuberger Berman. Neuberger Berman is sold to Lehman Brothers. Thank God you got the fuck out of there a few years before that thing tanked. And then you start Skybridge.

I know you love what you do, but was one of the goals at some point... You grew up middle class. You saw your father working really hard. Times were not easy at times. Was one of the goals at some point, you grew up middle class, you saw your father working really hard, times were not easy at times, was one of the goals to make a lot of money? I mean, a lot of my Wall Street friends, they use the term, fuck you money. That wasn't it for me, honestly, because like you, I'm still working. So once I reached escape velocity and I had some level of financial independence, it wasn't like, okay, well, that's it. Let me go fishing or something like that. I actually like what I'm doing. Let me rephrase that. I love what I'm doing. So I would be doing this. This is something I love doing. I love the challenge of it. I love the intellectual challenge of it. I was on the ropes last year. I wasn't going to miss a meal over it, but I was down 20% last March. By the way, the Wall Street Journal oversold technically. No one's going to write that story because it's a good news story.

They only write the bad news story. I understand. I'm a big boy. I'm not, I'm just making an observation. I'm not opining with any self-pity, but I'm just saying to you, that was a real interesting, stressful, because I don't like losing money for clients, but that was a real interesting challenge for me. And it got me actually exposed to different businesses. It got me exposed to Bitcoin,

which I ended up putting a half a billion dollars into Bitcoin, got several hundred million dollars in my Series G fund. And we have over a hundred million dollars now on our core specialty Bitcoin fund. We did a couple of secondaries. We've done Chime. We're about to do a big secondary right now for a pre-IPO company, which I wouldn't have done had I not gotten hit like that last year. So there's another learning lesson. If you're out there and you're working, luck and stuff starts to come to you. You're making your own luck for all your work and all your industry. So it turns out my business is in way better shape March of 2020 than it was in March of 2021 than it was in March of 2020. And that's through being a good entrepreneur and adapting.

Most people don't know that you're a money manager. I think to the average American watching you on Bill Maher, I mean, you're on TV, Fox, Anderson Cooper, you're on TV every week. But I don't think people know actually what you do. So very, very briefly, because we have a lot to cover before we end today. Can you just talk about SkyBridge and maybe in one minute or less? Because then I really want to move on. We have some great stuff to cover here. So here's what I would say. I manage money. I have a $9 billion money manager. I started excelling in my career doing better when I got into the FA business, financial advisory business, high net worth business at Goldman. I created registered investment advisor, as you mentioned, I sold it. Then I created this

hedge fund advisory business. It's almost 16 years old. It'll be 16 years old on March 7th, started March 7th, 2005. Other than the 11-day fiasco in Washington, that's what I was doing. But weirdly, Randy, as you know, if you watch CNBC, where I was a contributor for seven years, or business journalism, I was the host of Wall Street Week. So there are people in the business ecosystem who actually knew who I was. But I got more notoriety and let's say infamy as a result of working for Donald Trump. So you can be infamous and you can be famous, or you can be both famous and infamous. I happen to be both, I think. But my core business is to run my team and to manage the $9 billion that we have under management, which we've done reasonably successfully. If you look at the track record, you looked at our track record and you hit a stopwatch on April 1st of last year, not great.

But if you take the stopwatch right now, when you look at the 20-year tracker, you're like, wow, these guys know what they're doing. They got great performance. We're talking about the SALT Conference next, which started in May 2009. It's a conference of executives, hedge fund managers, thought leaders, politicians. Really one of the best conferences that I've ever been to. In the 11 years you've had it, or 12 years now, it's grown to almost 2,000 people. The speakers have ranged from President Biden and President Clinton and Tony Blair and Mike Bloomberg, Mark Cuban. Mike Milken is one of my favorites, the late Kobe Bryant as well. You have amazing bands there like Maroon 5. Lenny Kravitz has played there. It's one of the best networking places, I think,

in the world. You get 2,000 finance types there. You can walk up to people. I wanted to meet Mark Cuban. I walked up to him. By the way, you've been very generous to me in terms of the access there. So I'm grateful for that. Thank you so much. We've all heard the phrase, it's not what you know, it's who you know. So at what age... You went into politics to meet people, but at what age, for people who want to be successful and be the best that they can be, when should they stop thinking about networking? What should they do? What's their plan? say, okay, I got to do some networking today. I think about it organically. I'm like, okay, I want to meet people. I want to meet smart people. There may be things in my career that they will benefit from where they could avail themselves of something I'm doing or vice versa. And what I would tell people is think non-linear. Don't be transactional. Don't be transparently quid pro quo.

You said something very nice. Of course, I would be willing to extend my network to you. You've been exceedingly nice. I mean, I just want to say that for our viewers. I appreciate that, but I'm not looking for anything in exchange. My attitude is that's good karma generation and it comes back. You know, you and I are close friends. I've met different people. I've met Richard Branson as a result of that, or I did somebody a favor and now all of a sudden they become my friend.

You know, Ben Franklin had one of the best American aphorisms. If you want to make a friend, ask somebody for a favor. And when you think about it, it's so counterintuitive, but it's such genius because we're primordially developed as social creatures and we like reciprocating towards each other. And so when someone asks you to do something for them and you go out of your way to do it, you're making the person feel good. Like they've done somebody a good deed and now there's some bonding that takes place. So I would just tell people, allow it to flow, let it be organic, but no, you never stop networking. I would say that people, I mean, this is one of the positives of the politics, Randy. Some of the experience working for Donald Trump was traumatic. Some of

it set back my career, probably cost me some money, almost cost me my relationship with my wife, who I love. But some of that experience, silver lining perspective, was quite good for me because it made me more humble, made me more psychologically minded, and it ridiculously expanded my network accidentally. So I have a good relationship with Bill Maher now. You said you saw me on a show a few times. Bill and I are close. We both owned a piece of the Mets. He's a great human being. We have lunch or dinner together when I'm in LA. And once in a while, invite me on the show. I have a relationship with tons of different people. I'm not just

trying to put out a celebrity. I'm not saying it like that. I have tons of different people. I'm not just trying to put out a celebrity. I'm not saying it like that. I have tons of different people that I've encountered as a direct result of the fact that I went through that experience. And so that's another thing for your listeners. It may look like a bad thing at the time, but it may turn out to be a good thing. You don't know. Stay calm. Trust the flow. Trust the process. All right. Let's get into politics now. And I want to break it down pre-Trump and post-Trump. So pre-Trump, you're supporting Barack Obama, a classmate of yours from Harvard. You also supported Hillary Clinton, both Democrats. In 2008, you hold a fundraiser for Barack Obama, who beats John McCain and wins the presidency. And Obama starts his turn.

I bundled money for him. I mean, I was really raising money. Yeah. And so you're out there for Obama. But two years later, you told him at a CNBC event to stop whacking Wall Street like a panada. What was he whacking? I mean, the whole thing got taken out of...

I mean, that's just the problem with the media and everything from my perspective. I think that whole thing got taken out of, I mean, this is the problem with the media and everything from my perspective. I think that whole thing got taken out of context. I was trying to lay him up. Okay. So raised my hand. He says, Anthony, hey, president, how are you? Great. And he says, yeah, you look like we could still play hoops together. He made some kind of off the cuff joke and we both laughed. I said, listen, I said, there's an intersection between Wall Street and Main Street, and it's very vital to the economy. I said, but we're laying all the blame on the crisis on Wall Street. So why are we wagging Wall Street like a pinata? Why don't we just work on a way to heal the country? And he's a politician, by the way. Okay. So he seized on that and he started his political rat-a-tat-tat at Wall Street This and Wall Street That and Steve Schwartzman with Carried Interest. And he rat-a-tat-tatted me for about 10 minutes. And then typical of him, the show is over. He walks over to me. He puts his hand out like this to grip me in a certain handshake. It's like,

Mooch, it's just politics. I hope you're not offended. And that's everything you need to know about Washington. It's a game, right? But what I was trying to do was say there's a healthy nexus between those two sectors of our lives and let's figure out a way to harmonize them again. But we're not going to do that because we need scapegoats now. We're demonizing and we have the politicization and the polemics and so forth, and that's fine. I don't know how we're going to fix that actually. I remain hopeful. It was no offense to President Obama. I liked him. I've been to more White House Christmas parties under his term than I was at Donald Trump Christmas parties, zero Donald Trump Christmas parties. And I like President Obama. I like Michelle Obama,

First Lady Obama. And I always got along with him. But my politics were always center right. They were more Republican. Now I'm going to tell you why. And I got to go back to 1982. I'm filling out my selective service card at the post office. My father's with me. I'm also going to register to vote. I have to register to vote. Hey, pops, am I a Democrat or a Republican? My father looks at me, oh, no, no, you're a Republican. Put down Republican. And David Axelrod is the only person that I've met. And I did his podcast a few years ago. He said, Anthony, you're a Republican because your father's union was controlled by Joe Margiatta, who was the head of the Republican

party in Nassau County. And I looked at him, I said, David, how the hell did you know that? He goes, yeah, because I've studied union politics. There were only three counties in all of the United States where the Republicans controlled the union. And that was one of the counties because you're really a centrist. You're agnostic on social issues, but you're a Republican because your father was in a union controlled by the Republicans. 100% correct. 100%. So after the Obama situation, which was a higher profile fundraise because he was president, I remember saying this to him. Think about how ironic your life is. I remember saying it to him, and I think I did call him Barack at the time.

Let's use President Obama to be respectful. But he wasn't president at the time. But I said, you know, let me say Senator. Senator, I'm going to do this for you because, you know, you may actually be president. And then I'll be able to tell people that I actually knew a president because I never thought I was going to ever meet a president growing up on Long Island and my dad's blue collar family. I didn't think I was ever going to meet a president. You see what I mean? That's 2008. 2009, we did the SALT conference.

2010, Bill Clinton shows up. 2011, George Bush shows up. And then all of a sudden now I'm working for Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney shows up at the SALT conference. He almost makes the presidency. He loses pretty handily to Barack Obama. And now I'm with Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. And then now we got the Trump interplay. I think Trump is nuts. I said as much on television. Everybody has railed on Trump, by the way. Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo. It was great, by the way. She's one of my favorites who's been at the conference, by the way. I was just so impressed like her. I have a lot of respect for her, but she is flip-flopping around on him right now. He's a goon. I mean, you got to just call him a goon. I mean, I don't know why they're doing this. He sounds like a blithering idiot. Why they're paying this much attention to

him, I have no idea. I mean, just let him out the pasture. That's it. There's some things he did good. Let's look at what it was, the things he did well. There's other things he was terrible at. Put him out the pasture. You know what I'm saying? But any event, I made a mistake. And everybody went through the same thing with Trump. Hated him. Thought he was a goon.

Rudy Giuliani thought he was a goon. Was supporting Jeb Bush. You pick a person that worked for Donald Trump, they all thought he was a goon. So here's the arc. Goon. Holy shit, he's president. Let me figure out a way to like him. Wait a minute, it's impossible to like him. He's a goon. So here's the arc. Goon, holy shit, he's president. Let me figure out a way to like him. Wait a minute, it's impossible to like him. He's a goon. So that's the arc. You go from goon,

let me try to like him, to goon. And so they're all going to be there. They're all going to be there. They're all kissing his you-know-what right now because they think it's good for their power base or they don't want to get primaried or they're trying to make money off of it like him. It's a big con, but they'll all be there. It's a despicable thing to watch it happen, to be honest. When did you meet him for the first time? Oh, I can tell you exactly when I met him for the first time. It was May of 1995. I was at Goldman. I was in private banking. My old boss from the real estate department that fired me, Mike Vestitelli, took me to his office to meet him. I was an impressionable 31-year-old. I think I had met two celebrities in my life at that point. I had met Arnold Schwarzenegger because we were running his money. I happened to be on a team. There was a place called

Shotzi's or something like that in Santa Monica. Yep, on Main Street. Yeah. So I used to go there and have lunch with him and Maria Shriver. And I think the other famous person that I met in the 90s was Donald Trump. And so it was a very impressionable meeting for me. I'm sure he doesn't remember it from a hole in the wall. And the funny thing is when you fast forward, it was the same office, the same setting. Guy never changed the way his office looked in

like 30 years. But I didn't really get to know him until I worked at CNBC. I was a contributor to CNBC. He was at NBC. We crossed paths. We went to a couple of parties. I met him there. Then we went to Robin Hood, the charity. I met him. He was always very nice to me. He was always complimentary to my television presentation. And then we got to know each other better during the Romney fundraising. We did two fundraising events in his triplex apartment at Trump Tower. Again, I helped him raise a lot of money. He was very nice to me. And so he called me and booked a breakfast with me the day after The Apprentice was over. I said to my sister, okay, sure, I'll go over and see him. I went over to see him.

Wasn't I great on the TV last night? I mean, that was live. Wasn't I great? I said, I don't know. I wasn't watching you. He goes, you were the only one not watching me. The ratings were great. And he said, well, that's it. I'm running for president and you're good on television. You don't have to give me any money. I just want your advocacy. And so I want you to come work for me. I laughed. I said, you're not running for president. I said, I mean, you're at 2% in the polls. You're not going to run for president. He goes, ah, you're like everybody else. I'm at 2%, but I'm going to go right to the top of the polls and I'm going to stay there until I win, which he did, by the way. And I said to him, well, I'm with Scott Walker, but Scott's, I don't know if he's got the legs for this. I said, but I'll end up

being with Jeb Bush. I actually was with Scott Walker as I met him through the recall. He asked me for the favor. I said, fine, if he doesn't make it, I'll be with Jeb Bush. I said, but you're not really running for president. He goes, oh no, I'm running. He goes, I'll be with Jeb Bush. I said, but you're not really running for president. He goes, oh, no, I'm running. He goes, I'll tell you what. After I knocked those two lightweights, this is how he talks, right, out of the race, come work for me. So I shook his hand. I said, yeah, all right.

I'll tell you what. If you knock those two guys out of the race, I'll come work with you. He knocked them out of the race. I went to go work for him. That was like one of the biggest mistakes that I've made in my life. Could be one of the big, if not the biggest. And then the situation unfolded and the rest is history. But like I said, there was a silver lining to it too, in terms of the exposure. And I have a much bigger network

today than I would have because of that. It's a big learning experience, it's very humbling. So I don't regret it, Randy, but it was a mistake because he was incompetent. He wasn't capable of handling the presidency. And he's a malevolent guy. He's not a fun guy. He's a malevolent, nasty guy. When he went after Deirdre on Twitter, I was like, okay, you're going after my wife on Twitter?

Do I look like Ted Cruz? I mean, we're talking about my neighborhood. There was no chance that I was going to okay, you're going after my wife on Twitter? Do I look like Ted Cruz? I mean, we're talking about my neighborhood. There was no chance that I was going to let that stand. I just started pounding him into the ground. Then he tried to come back at me and I pounded him harder. Then his staff said, you got to stop going back at him. He's getting 50, 70,000 Twitter followers every time you hit him. He doesn't care.

I mean, me, I don't care. You want to come at me, I'll come at you 10 times harder. And then I realized that we got to beat him. And then I just started working. And then I figured out how to beat him. I couldn't beat him with white people, particularly white Italians, like my neighborhood voted for him. But the neighborhoods in Philly, the neighbors in Detroit that you grew up in, they all voted for him. Trust me. I know those people. So I went into the African-American communities and I worked on voter registration and I did tremendous amounts of radio. I didn't just do CNBC and MSNBC. I did local television in local markets in swing states and I did a tremendous amount of radio. I'm not saying I helped or I didn't, but at least I was part of explaining how terrible this guy is and how terrible he was.

And we would have been really in for it had he won. I mean, you'd have over a million people dead from this virus. You know, I think it's interesting because I do think, I mean, I know you're very well respected. You're very articulate. I do think it made a difference. What I think is important, people who don't like Trump saw a lot of people, John Kelly, Bolton, all come out and criticize him after they left. I mean, you knew him very well. You

were in the Oval Office. I think that's... And I tried not to criticize him. Listen, it took me two years after my firing to admonish people and say, I'm sorry, I can no longer support this man and what he's doing. So it wasn't like, you know, I was trying to be a loyal Republican and I was like, okay, it didn't work out. The guy's a little nuts. I got fired, but I got fired for a stupid mistake that I made. I'm accountable for it. I wasn't blaming anybody. As I mentioned, General Kelly and I are good friends today. No problem being fired, even though it was gut-wrenching to get lit up in the media like that. No problem. But it was the persistency of his behavior and the recklessness of his behavior. It's like, okay, I can't support this. This is crazy. All right. Let's talk about something related. It's something that we all experienced, I think, in our lifetime, the ability to try to overcome incredibly difficult odds. I mean, here was a guy, there were 12 candidates in the race when he said, I want to be president. I was actually at my best friend's wedding in Mar-a-Lago in November. It was actually my

birthday, November 22nd, 2015. He was there. It was a hedge fund crowd, very wealthy crowd. He comes down, people taking photos with him. Everyone was mocking him, laughing with him. And then you see right before, a week before, he comes out on tape. He's got the sexual harassment thing. He talks about women's vaginas. He actually used a different word like that. And let's go outside of politics for a second. We talk about 18 years ago, these two guys, Barton Eberhard and Mark Teppan, and he had an idea for a new car company. You plug it into the wall.

You're competing with General Motors, Ford, Mercedes. General Motors that year did $194 billion in revenue and $3.6 billion in net income. But it didn't matter to these guys. They said, fuck it. I'm going to take them on. When you see things like this, and we're talking about people who want to pursue against the odds, they want to succeed no matter what it takes. What's the message to our viewers and our listeners? Is it to dream big and anything is possible? That's one of my mottos. Anything is possible. I would say that anything is possible and you have to dream big, but you also,

you're talking about Tesla, obviously, and Elon Musk, he's a very unique guy. Elon Musk is an engineer and he's got a knack for execution. And Elon Musk, there's a bid-ask spread between Elon Musk's persona and what he's actually doing for a living. This guy is a phenomenal manager. He is a phenomenal delegator and he has an executable vision and he is great at hiring people. Okay. So this guy fits your boxes of excellence, every box. He's a little bit of a kook when he's on Joe Rogan, or if he does your podcast or he's smoking a blunt and he acts a little nuts, but that's part of his shtick. That's part of his persona. You see what I mean? And so I admire him. It's not clear to me that everybody can be him, right? There's three or four people at the top of the mountain. And so

what I would say to your listeners is you don't have to be him. You can be you and you can dig deep and think about what it is inside you that you like. So again, you have a mind for engineering. You were able to see Akamai before others. You took the risk, you exploited it. You stayed with it when there were periods of uncertainty and doubt, right? Or they say the FUD, fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And so you develop this excellence. Somebody like me, I think one of my traits is persistency and resilience. I don't care. You want to roll me in glass, make fun of me on late night television. You want to attack me on TV, on live television? No problem. Let's keep rolling. Let's make it work. I would say to your listeners, think about what it is about yourself because believe it or not, inside your personality, there is something, and I don't know what it is, but each person has it. You then have to overcome the fear of expressing it. And I can tell you that the people in my life, I can sense right away, Randy,

when they have overcome the fear of being who they were meant to be. Once you see it happen, you're like, okay, this person, man or woman, this person is living their true self. And so for me, that's excellence. It's not a comparative thing. Let me compare myself to ABC, XYZ, ZYX. No, everybody's got a unique personality. Everybody's coming in with strengths and weaknesses. And oh, by the way, you make a terrible mistake when you compare yourself to somebody because you don't know their upbringing you don't know what their struggles were or what their obstacles were or what their benefits were you don't know can't you can never figure it out from just looking at the person so focus inward focus on yourself and overcome the fear and that anxiety of falling down. I took my grandmother seriously. She told

me what other people think of me is none of my business. Now, that's very hard to do, but I took it seriously. And so when I was getting lit up or someone said some bad things about me, I said, okay, that's their point of view. Don't care. Lock on the target. Let's generate some success. But I'm also Italian, so let's not forget that. My uncle Sal is 94. Do you know what Italian Alzheimer's is? No. You forget everything but the grudges, Randy. You forget everything but the grudges. My uncle's 94, and he gets up in the morning. I'm not going to tell you the guy that he hates, but he gets up in the morning, and he's getting ready to brush his teeth, to shave. He says, Johnny Goombas, is he still alive? The answer is yes. He goes, I got to live one more goddamn day.

He wants to outlive the guy that he hates. He'll be 500 probably. My point is, everybody's motivated by different things. I don't have the hate in me, but I'm just making the joke that, you know, whatever it is she got going, just go with it. You know, he's done pretty well at 94. You're one of the best public speakers I've ever seen. I talked about it before. You're, I said this already, you're articulate, your intelligence shows through, you're insightful, you're funny. I mean, you make people laugh. It's been, I think, well, I know it's been one of the hallmarks of your career. And it's one of the things that I think from where I'm sitting has made you successful. You can deal with people. You're great at dealing

with people. Very nice of you to say. It's true. How important is public speaking to our success? And how did you do it? Is it natural? Should people work on this? Is it important to their success in the future? We all have different theories about public speaking. So, I mean, you know, I've read that, you know, it's one of the most fearful things for people. And they say that it's like fear of death and public speaking, they're like almost the same. But here's what I would say about public speaking. You have to practice it. And I put the 10,000 hours in. Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blank, I put the 10,000 hours in. I have done at least 10,000 hours of television appearances, podcasts, public speeches, salt conferences, live stage events. I have put the

time in. So you can't just walk to the podium. Also, you could ask anybody on television, were you nervous the first time you were on TV? And I would say the most honest people say yes. Now, the last thing I would say is what I told my daughter about stage fright. She's 12 years old. She's a singer. She's doing pretty well with her career. Been slightly sidetracked by COVID, but I'm very optimistic for her. She's got a great singing voice.

And she was 12 years old. She's singing at Shea Stadium. And she's going to sing God Bless America, seventh inning, 12 years old. She's singing at Shea Stadium and she's going to sing God Bless America seventh inning, 12 years old, 53,000 people. Johan Santana is pitching. Daddy, I'm very nervous. I said, well, this will probably be the most people you ever perform for live in your life. I mean, this is the stadium that the Beatles performed in in 1964 and you're at capacity. So the reason I want you to do this is that for the rest of your life, you'll be able to say, well, I sang in front of 55,000 people. If I got 1,000 people at a Broadway theater or I'm at the... It's always comparatively, right?

But here's the thing, Randy, don't ever forget this. And this is what I said to my daughter. Every person in that stadium is one person. So every single person, Amelia, if I put that person right in front of you, you could have a conversation with, you'd feel very relaxed, and you could sing for. And if you dial into that idea that you're now just singing to one person 53,000 times, you'll recognize that they're just people. And all of that self-consciousness and all that fear will go away. And then after all, you are Italian. You like talking or singing. They can't even respond to you. I love being on television because you're talking to 2 million

people, 3 million people. They can't talk back. They have to listen to you, these poor sons of bitches. So the point I'm making to her is the point I would make to anybody. Public speaking, certainly some people are better at it than others. Certainly John Kennedy was more charismatic than Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon could have practiced that for a million years. Kennedy had a certain charm and swagger, okay? Sean Connery as James Bond, I mean, to catch James Bond. I mean, come on, he's got that move. You know what I mean? And you can't put Mike Myers in that role. Mike Myers can play Austin Powers, but he can't play James Bond like Sean Connery. I mean, so we're all naturally gifted different ways. But here's the thing I would say. You can learn it. You got to practice it. And you got to dial out of your fear basis of it.

And if you can do that, you end up being a pretty good public speaker. We talked about your suits. And I was going to talk about this before you mentioned it. You're wearing custom Loro Piana suits these days. They look fantastic on you. Yeah, and Brioni. Okay. Well, we don't want to leave out Brioni.

Like you, when I was a second-year law student in these firms, I had to go in the interview. I didn't have a good suit. I didn't have shoes. I remember calling my mom from Johnson & Murphy. Hey, I need shoes for this. They're expensive. Will you help me pay for this? I bought my suit at TJ Maxx.

And you take pride in what you wear. Like you, if I have two people that I want to hire, and one is frumpy in a polyester suit, like you say, and one looks good, I'm going to hire the guy that looks good or the woman that looks good every single time. These are intangibles. I think they're critical to our success. What are some of the other ones? You dress well. What else would you focus on high level giving people advice? High level, I would say be prompt. That'll increase your odds of success. Don't be late for meetings. I know that sounds cliche.

Something that Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong Chinese property tycoon said to me when I was 35. He said, Anthony, leave money on the table for your partners. You'll always have success if you do that. Don't look for the last dollar in a deal. Don't be overly transactional. Help people's children. I don't know how to express that to you better than that. If somebody like we talked about Billy Tommaso,

my father would have given Billy Tommaso his two kidneys, okay? The help he gave me and my brother. Do you know what I mean? So if you go out of your way and you help people's children, they never forget that, you know? Try to help people's children. Here's the other thing. We're in a cancel culture now.

We're in this like insidious thing where, you know, if you haven't been canceled, they're going to try to cancel you. I mean, it's crazy, right? I mean, it's crazy. And so people fall from grace and they get beat up in our society now and they get thrown into the ash heap. Don't do that. I can't tell you the number of people that I have brought a box of donuts to and a cup of Joe to that have lost a job. And they're like, well, I'm no longer powerful. Why are you standing here with the donuts? Because you're a good guy or you're a good woman. And so I just want to let you know, you haven't lost me as a friend because your power position dropped. And if you do that, what ends up happening is you're like an authentic person and people are like, hey, that's cool. And then, you know, goes around, comes around. You know, when I got blown out of the White House, that was a rough moment for me. And, you know, the media was ridiculing me.

A lot of them didn't like Trump. So they were taking that out on me. They were rolling me hard. I can't tell you, Randy, yourself included, the number of people that reached out to me to offer me help and support, whether it was Michael Milken, Randall Kaplan, Richard Branson. I don't mean to be name dropping. Friends of mine from high school that are clamors, pizza guy, sending me food to the house. You understand what I'm saying? You want to be that person. You don't want to be the guy that falls from grace and where people are like, yes, I'm glad the guy's on his knees. Let's punch him in the head harder.

You follow what I'm saying? So be nice to people. It will come back to you. It will definitely come back to you. You really find out who your friends are when you're down. It's really amazing. When you're on top of the world, everybody wants to be your friend. And when you're down and... But I've also found too, when you're on top of the world, there's a lot of people who are really not that happy for you. It's kind of one of these weird things, I think. And let me give you some advice on that. Not that weird things, I think. And let me give you some advice on that. Not that you need it from me, but let me give you some advice on that. The best among us choose not to judge human frailty too harshly. That is a human weakness. That's born from the

atavistic nature of wanting our genes to progress. When someone else is doing better, our primordial response is jealousy and envy. And it's very primordial and it's not well thought out. The transcendental experience where you move from the animal to the sublime and you become more human is when you recognize there are many fish in the sea and that everybody's on a different life experience and everybody's on a different arc and there's no need to compare your material to somebody else's. And what you should do is dial into your life with its own gratitude and its own measure of success, whatever it might be. Once you do that, which is an inward move, you become resoundingly happy. If you're going to make a comparison between yourself and everybody else on the planet,

first of all, you're not them. You don't even know how they grew up. You don't know anything about their lives. Then secondarily, you drive yourself crazy. It's very primordial, and it requires maturity to go in the other direction. We're almost at the end. You've been very generous with your time, so I'm going to be mindful of it, but I want to end it on philanthropy. You're involved in a lot of things. U.S. Olympic. Is it the Paralympic? Is that how you say it? The Paralympic Foundation?

Yeah, Paralympic. Yeah, the foundation. Yep. I was involved with that for five years. Yep. Brain Tumor Foundation, Kennedy Center. How important is it in our search of excellence to give back to the community? For me, it's one of the most important, if not the single most important thing I've been able to do in my career. You know this better than anybody, but my joy comes from that. My joy, I got to help some of my family members. Obviously, like I told you, I support my parents, of course, and other family members. First of all, the fact that the good Lord gave me the skillset and the brain chemistry to be on the giving side of things, I'm so grateful to that. And then secondarily, when you're helping somebody, when you're quietly paying those tuitions for people, or you take one of your nieces, you make sure all of their college

tuition is paid for, and they don't have to go to college with school debt, it is the greatest feeling in the world. I don't think there's any better feeling than that. Your brain is set on fire by the giving and your brain is set on fire by creating those moments for yourself. When you're helping somebody else, if you're a happy person, you are totally wired to help. You're wired for that. We're at the end, and I just want to give you the opportunity. What topics, or not topics, but what advice, specific advice do you have for people, our viewers and our listeners, to be the very best they can achieve and to achieve true excellence in their lives and their careers?

Okay. Well, I mean, it's very, I don't want to make it too simple, but it's sort of simple. And there's three things that go on in my head. Number one, overcome fear. Have to do that. You want to achieve excellence. You're dreaming something big. You've got to overcome your fear of it.

You have to overcome it. The second thing is you have to overcome the fear of failure and the failure. So you have to overcome both of those things. And so you have to relax if you're not doing well. You get fired from the White House, what are you going to do? I don't wake up in the morning, kick myself in the pants. I made a mistake in the White House, move on. The last piece of this thing is the most important thing. Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself. The millstone of regret, the millstone of, I should have went left. I went right. Oh, let me think about it for another

day. Forget it. You're not Woody Allen. Take the millstone of regret, drop it, and move forward. And think about how exciting tomorrow is going to be. And if you made a mistake in the past, write down what you learned from it. Try not to repeat it and move forward. If you do those three things, you're getting so close to what you need to be. You know this and I know this. It's 5% or 10% extra effort, Randy, but it's the mindset and it's the conditioning to the circumstances. It's not what is happening to you, but how you handle it that allows you to grow. You see? And if you do those three things, you're well on your way. Awesome advice. I can't thank you enough, Anthony, for coming on the show. No, it's great to be on with you.

Well, hopefully we'll do it again. I'd like to invite you on my podcast. I hope we can do a home and away. I'd love to do it. Thank you so much. All right. God bless you, man. Bye.